How can we move Quality and Reliability ideas from end-of-line test and inspection to front-of-line design inputs?

Take the Quality during Design Journey

If you do design engineering, then you can use Quality during Design to work like a Star Performer.

Adjust when and with whom we do design activities. Use frameworks to make communication easier. Make design decisions with data.

improve product design success
avoid surprises
solve design questions earlier

What You'll Work On

Understand Root Causes

Study Risks to Analyze and Control

Develop Concepts with a Cross-Functional Team & Users

Design Development with Quality Engineers & Reliability Engineers

Field Monitoring for Acceptability & Continuous Improvement

The Quality during Design Journey is for those:

wanting to take their engineering career to the next step
working in any industry in product development, or aspire to work in product development
wanting to understand how risk, quality, and reliability programs fit together with design
becoming an engineering manager and wanting ideas to help guide their team to communicate cross-functionally
managers or directors wanting their team to have training

People illustrations by Storyset

Quality Engineering & Reliability Engineering are established fields with proven results.

Iterative methods can be used throughout the product development process.

You don’t have to be a QE or RE to benefit from quality thinking. You can use their tools, techniques, and methods. And you’ll know when to ask for specialized help from a QE or RE to get the results you want.

The Qualities of a STAR Performer are Universal

consistently spots issues & problems and makes sure something gets done about them
succeeds at working across organizational boundaries
consistently succeeds at delighting internal and external customers
always gets work done on time with high quality

Kelley, Robert Earl. How to be a Star at Work: Nine Breakthrough Strategies You Need to Succeed. United States, Times Business, 1999, pp. 13, 305.

What makes a STAR Product Development Engineer?

Getting sharp, early, fact-based product definitions before development begins
Solid, up-front homework – doing the front end, new product development activities well
Technically competent and a high quality of execution

These values in the new product development process increases a design success rate at least 2X, up to 3.3X! Designs are 85% more likely to succeed than those designs that aren’t developed with those values.

Cooper, Robert G. Winning at New Products, Third Ed. Basic Books. 2001. pp. 59-77.

How can you become a STAR?

Use Quality and Reliability Engineering as part of the product development strategy. Tools from these fields get ideas onto 'paper', helps teams communicate across different backgrounds and functions, and reframes problems and ideas. Learn how through the Quality during Design Journey!

What others say

"You covered a lot of material in a very clear practical manner. The example was very helpful showing how the Quality tools can be used in a real-life example."

Cary Enslow, Reliability Engineering Expert at HP, Inc.

re: "Quality Tools Training" custom training program

"The overall theme of Dianna’s podcast, using quality tools in the design process, shows her insight as to what’s important in developing products. Any project would be lucky to have Dianna’s input."

Roger Hill, Medical Device Engineering & Management

What experts say

The Business Bottom Line

Getting sharp, early, fact-based product definitions before development begins and doing the front-end of new product activities well increases a design success rate at least 2X, up to 3.3X! Designs are 85% more likely to succeed than those designs that aren’t developed with those values. Market shares improve by at least 21 share points.

Cooper, Robert G. Winning at New Products, Third Ed. Basic Books. 2001. pp. 59-77.

Profitability is affected by the quality of product, too. Improved design quality leads to higher perceived value. This leads to higher prices, increased market share, and higher profitability. Improved design quality also leads to improved quality of conformance, which results in lower manufacturing and source costs and higher overall profitability.

Lindsay, William M., and Evans, James R. "From Continuous Improvement to Continuous Innovation." Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence. United States, Cengage Learning, 2017. pp. 29..

"A thorough understanding of customers’ needs and wants, the competitive situation, and the nature of the market is an essential component of new product success.”

“…traditional market research, such as large sample surveys, may not be appropriate for every project. But building in the voice of the customer, seeking customer insights, and getting the right market information before Development proceeds are vital requirements.”

Robert G. Cooper
Cooper, Robert G. Winning at New Products, Third Ed. Basic Books. 2001. pp. 25, 86.

“Product development is just a succession of problems to be solved, so development speed depends on the speed of the problem-solving process.”

Preston G. Smith, Donald G. Reinertsen

Reinertsen, Donald G., and Smith, Preston G. Developing Products in Half the Time. United Kingdom, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995.

Sign up for Course 1, available now!

COURSE 1

$ 990 USD

QDD Journey Lessons for Course 1: Design for Problems & Risk
12 months access to learning materials

LEARN MORE TODAY

AVAILABLE SOON

QDD JOURNEY

$ 1,780 USD

QDD Journey Lessons for Course 1: Design for Problems & Risk
QDD Journey Lessons for Course 2: Design with Quality & Reliabilty
QDD Journey Lessons for Course 3: Design for the Users
12 months access to learning materials

available soon

AVAILABLE SOON

EXTRA COACHING

$ 2,600 USD

QDD Journey Lessons for Courses 1, 2, and 3
12 months of access to learning materials
(6) 1:1 45-minute coaching sessions to implement course lessons

available soon

Sales tax is not included in the purchase price. Need a custom plan for a team or group? Contact us.

Still not sure if this is right for you?

There's more information about the courses.

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE COURSES

You might be thinking...

I have a QE on my team. Quality stuff is their responsibility.

You’re in THE BEST position to use quality thinking! You make decisions, daily, about the design: it’s materials and components, suppliers to work with, and tolerances and manufacturing. The choices you make have a trickle-down effect on all other aspects of getting a product to market. QEs handle a broad range of topics related to product design and can’t be a part of all the choices you make. That’s why you can benefit the design and your career by using Quality during Design.

We have a cross-functional team already and hold regular meetings. I don’t need to do extra work with them.

You involving the cross-functional team (marketing, commercial operations, regulatory) in your design decisions is a valuable responsibility. Sometimes, we don’t even know where to start or what to ask. And they’re not sure what to tell you. Using quality frameworks can help you to work with your cross-functional team by helping to be people-focused, use risk-based thinking, uncover ideas, navigate decisions with data, and empower all of your team to be part of the design process.

I want to stay in design engineering. I don’t want to be a quality engineer or reliability engineer.

We need you in design engineering! You don’t have to know all the details about a quality engineering method or know the complicated calculations that reliability engineers get into. You do need to know enough about them to know when their input and analysis will help your team’s design. Quality during Design Journey will give you that high-level viewpoint: easily accessible tools that you can use AND a peek into how QEs and REs can help with design.

We can’t even get started with QE and RE until the design is finished.

Dianna Deeney

BSME

Hi. I'm your lead coach, Dianna Deeney.

I've worked in manufacturing on the shop floor as an operator, then as a process engineer performing transfers, to project engineer, and then as a quality and reliability professional working as part of new product development teams and on quality systems.

In product development, our goal is to create and launch successful designs. I've seen it and experts report it: early, fact-based concept development is needed for success in design. Engineers make decisions about the design daily and need to be proactive and involved in early development.

A challenge is that design engineers have many customers. Engineers need to communicate and discuss ideas with the broader team, get information to make decisions and prioritize efforts, and to do a lot of up-front work before the design even makes it to the engineering drawing board, when specifications start being defined.

Oftentimes, there's not a clear way to get that information. Engineers (like you and me) benefit from having frameworks and methods to be able to proactively do early concept work - the work we do with our cross-functional team to use as inputs into design engineering.

With these methods, they can get large if we lose sight of why we're doing them. I've lived through analyses that had gotten too big! Instead, we want to make decisions with information and data and move forward. Then, iterate on what we've done during concept development throughout the development process so we can continue to use them to make decisions.

I created the Quality during Design Journey to share these frameworks, tools, and know-how to do that early, up-front work that matters. I've used and coached other engineers on these methods in industry, and I want to bring it to you.

The goal of Quality during Design: make design decisions with our broader team through communication and data - early - during concept development and then iteratively throughout the development process. We:

take a practical approach by setting goals and scaling what we do to what we really need and based on where we are in the development cycle.
reframe design as solving problems and use systems-thinking viewpoints.
iterate risk analyses and FMEA (failure mode and effects analysis) for risk-based decisions and priorities throughout development, starting at concept.
search for failure modes, root causes, and consider reliability.
borrow tools from quality practitioners to facilitate communication and have user-centered design inputs.

No two design projects are exactly the same, so we don't follow a recipe. Instead, we learn concepts and have tools in our toolbox that we know how to use to help us create great designs.

I invite you to join!

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